The Interpretation Of Murder

by Jed Rubenfeld

  'You aren't in the least. But "not to be" can only mean death,' said Nora. 'Not to be means' - she shrugged - 'not to be.'

  I had been reclining on my side. Now I sat up. 'No: I mean yes. I mean, "not to be" has a second meaning. The opposite of being is not only death. Not for Hamlet. To not be is also to seem'

  'To seem what?'

  'Just to seem' I stood, pacing and, I'm ashamed to say, cracking my knuckles savagely. 'The clue has been there all along, at the very beginning of the play, where Hamlet says, "Seems, madam? Nay it is. I know not 'seems.'" Think of it. Denmark is rotten. Everyone ought to be in mourning for Hamlet's father. His mother especially ought to be in mourning. He, Hamlet, ought to be king. Instead, Denmark is celebrating his mother's marriage to, of all people, his loathsome uncle, who has assumed the throne.

  'And what most galls him is the feigning of grief, the seeming, the wearing of black by people who can't wait to feast at the marriage tables and disport themselves like animals in their beds. Hamlet wants no part of such a world. He won't pretend. He refuses to seem. He is.

  'Then he learns of his father's murder. He swears revenge. But from that point on, he enters the world of seeming. His first step is to "put on an antic disposition" - to pretend to be mad. Next he listens in awe as an actor weeps for Hecuba. Then he actually instructs the players on how to pretend convincingly. He even writes a script for them himself, to be played that night, a scene he must pretend is anodyne, but that will actually reenact his father's murder, in order to surprise his uncle into an admission of guilt.

  'He is falling into the domain of playing, of seeming.

  For Hamlet, "To be, or not to be" isn't "to be, or not to exist." It's "to be, or to seem"; that's the decision he has to make. To seem is to act - to feign, to play a part. There's the solution to all of Hamlet, right there, in front of everyone's nose. Not to be is to seem, and to seem is to act. To be, therefore, is not to act. Hence his paralysis! Hamlet was determined not to seem, and that meant never acting. If he holds to that determination, if he would be, he cannot act. But if he would take arms and avenge his father, he must act - he must choose to seem, rather than to be.'

  I looked to my audience of one. 'I see,' she said. 'Because he must deceive to get at his uncle.'

  'Yes, yes, but it's also universal. All action is acting. All performing is performance. There's a reason these words have double meanings. To design means to plan, but also to deceive. To fabricate is to make with skill, but also to deceive. Art means deception. Craft - deception. There is no escaping it. If we would play a part in the world, we must act. Say a man psychoanalyzes a woman. He becomes her doctor; he assumes a role. It isn't lying, but it is acting. If he drops that role with her, he assumes another - friend, lover, husband, whatever it is. We can choose what part we play, but that's all.'

  Nora's brows were knit. 'I've acted,' she said. 'With you.'

  It happens that way sometimes: the moment of truth erupts right in the middle of some other scene, when the action is elsewhere and the attention diverted. I knew what she must be talking about: her secret fantasy about her father, which she had confessed yesterday, but which she had naturally tried to keep secret. 'It's my fault,' I replied. 'I didn't want to hear the truth. I felt the same way about Hamlet for the longest time. I didn't want to believe that Freud's view of the play could be right.'

  'Dr Freud has a view about Hamlet?' she inquired.

  'Yes, it's - it's what I told you. That Hamlet has a secret wish to - to have sex with his mother.'

  'Dr Freud says that?' she exclaimed. 'And you believe it? How repulsive.'

  'Well, yes, but I'm a little surprised to hear you say so.'

  'Why?' she asked.

  'Because of what you said yesterday.'

  'What did I say?'

  'You confessed,' I said, 'to the same kind of incestuous wish.'

  'You are insane.'

  I lowered my voice but spoke severely. 'Miss Acton, you admitted to me in the park yesterday, very plainly, that you were jealous when you saw Clara Banwell with your father. You said you wished you were the one who -'

  She flushed scarlet. 'Stop it! Yes, I said I was jealous, but not of Clara! How disgusting! I was jealous of my father!'

  We faced each other, both standing now, across the little woolen blanket. A pair of squirrels, which had been frolicking about a nearby tree trunk, froze in their tracks and eyed us suspiciously. 'That's why you thought you were vile?' I asked.

  'Yes,' she whispered.

  'That's not vile,' I said. 'At least, not by comparison.'

  My remark did not amuse her. I touched her cheek. She looked down. Taking her chin in my hand, I lifted her face to mine and bent toward her. She pushed me away.

  'Don't,' she said.

  She wouldn't meet my eyes. She withdrew from me and set about the picnic things, gathering the remains, packing them in the basket, shaking the crumbs from the blanket. In silence, we rode back to the stables and returned to the house.

  So: all my fine ethical scruples about taking advantage of Nora's transferential interest in me - supposing she had any - melted away when I discovered she had confessed to a Sapphic desire, not an incestuous one. I was embarrassed to discover this about myself, but there was a logic to it. The moment I understood the truth, I no longer felt Nora would be kissing her father were she to kiss me. Perhaps I ought to have concluded she would be kissing Clara, but it didn't feel that way.

  The main house was quiet now, the summer afternoon air perfectly still, the large interior rooms shadowy and empty. All the windows were shuttered again - to keep the sun off the drapery and furniture, I supposed. Nora, pensive and wordless, led me into the octagonal library with the splendidly carved woodwork. She locked the doors behind us and pointed to an armchair. I was meant to sit down in it - and did. Nora knelt on the floor in front of me.

  For the first time since she had turned me away, she spoke. 'Do you remember when you first saw me? When I couldn't speak?'

  I was unable to read her expression. She looked penitent and virginal at once. 'Of course,' I said.

  'I didn't lose my voice.'

  'I beg your pardon?'

  'I only pretended,' she said.

  I tried not to reveal how dry my mouth suddenly felt. 'That's why you could speak the next morning,' I said.

  She nodded.

  'Why?' I asked.

  'And my amnesia.'

  'What about it?'

  'That wasn't real either,' she said.

  'You had no amnesia?'

  'I was pretending.'

  The girl gazed up at me. I had the peculiar notion that she was someone I had never met before. I tried to reorient what I knew or thought I knew around these new facts. I tried to restructure all the various scenes of the last week, to make them cohere - but couldn't. 'Why?'

  She shook her head, biting her lower hp.

  'You were trying to ruin Banwell?' I asked. 'You were going to say he did it?'

  'Yes.'

  'But you were lying.'

  'Yes. But the rest of it - almost all of it - was true.'

  She seemed to be pleading for sympathy. I felt none. No wonder she said the transference had no application to her. I hadn't psychoanalyzed her at all. 'You made a fool of me,' I said.

  'I didn't mean to. I couldn't - it's so -'

  'Everything you told me was a lie.'

  'No. He did try to take me when I was fourteen. He tried again when I was sixteen. And I did see my father with Clara. Right here, in this room.'

  'You told me you saw your father and Clara at the Banwells' summerhouse.'

  'Yes.'

  'Why would you lie about that?'

  'I didn't.'

  My mind wheeled and groped. I remembered now: her parents' summerhouse was in the Berkshires, in Massachusetts. We were not at her parents' summerhouse at all. We were at the Banwells'. The servants knew her not because they were her servants, but because she had been here so oft
en. The reality of the situation suddenly became fragile, as if it might crack. I stood. She took my hands and gazed up at me.

  'You did those things to your own body,' I said. 'You whipped yourself. You scarred yourself. You burned yourself.'

  She shook her head.

  A series of recollections came to my mind. First, helping Nora into a carriage outside the hotel. My hands had closed entirely around her waist, including her lower spine, yet she had not flinched. When I touched her neck, to trigger her memories - which had all been a lie - I held her by the small of the back once more. Again she didn't wince. 'You have no injuries,' I said. 'You faked them. You painted them on, and allowed no one to touch you. You were never attacked.'

  'No,' she said.

  'No you weren't, or no you were?'

  'No,' she repeated.

  I seized her wrists. She gasped. 'I'm asking you a simple question. Were you whipped? I don't care who did it. Did any man - if not Banwell, then someone else - whip you? Yes or no. Tell me.'

  She shook her head. 'No,' she whispered. 'Yes. No. Yes. So hard I thought I would die.'

  If it hadn't been so awful, her changing her story four times in five seconds would have been funny. 'Show me your back,' I said.

  She shook her head. 'You know it's true. Dr Higginson told you.'

  'You fooled him as well.' I grasped the top of her dress, tore it, and let it fall to her shoulders. She gasped but didn't move or try to stop me. Her shoulders were unhurt. I saw the top of her bosom; bare, unhurt. I turned her around. There seemed to be no wounds on her back, but I couldn't see below her shoulder blades. A white, tight-laced corset covered her from the scapula down.

  'Are you going to rip my bodice as well?' she asked.

  'No. I've seen enough. I'm going back to the city, and you're coming with me.' She belonged, very possibly, in a sanatorium after all. If she did not, I didn't know where she belonged, but she had to be in someone's charge, and it wasn't mine. Nor was I going to be responsible for having shipped her off to the Banwells' country house. 'I'm taking you home.'

  'Very well,' she said.

  'Oh, not worried anymore about being locked up in an asylum? That was another lie?'

  'No. It's true. But I have to leave here.'

  'Do you think I'm a fool?' I asked, knowing the answer was yes. 'If you were in danger of being locked up, you would refuse to leave.'

  'I can't stay the night here. Mr Banwell will find out eventually. The servants may wire from town this evening.'

  'So what?' I asked.

  'He will come to kill me,' she said.

  I laughed dismissively, but she merely looked up at me. I examined her lying blue eyes as deeply as I could. Either she believed what she was saying, or she was the best prevaricator I'd ever seen - which I already knew to be the case. 'You are making a fool of me again,' I said, 'but I'm going to believe you mean what you say. Banwell knows you named him as your assailant; perhaps you have reason to fear him, even though you invented the attack. In any event, all the more reason I should take you home.'

  'I can't go like this,' she said, looking down at her torn dress. 'I'll find something of Clara's.'

  As she neared the doorway, I called out to her. 'Why did you bring me here?'

  'To tell you the truth.' She opened the doors and ran up the marble stairway, clutching her dress to her chest with both hands. Fortunately, none of the help was there to see her. They would probably have called the police and reported a rape.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  'I'm not saying he killed her, Your Honor. I'm just saying he's hiding something.' Detective Littlemore was speaking to Mayor McClellan in the latter's office late Friday afternoon. He was referring to George Banwell.

  'What is your evidence?' asked an exasperated McClellan. 'Be quick, man; I can give you no more than five minutes.'

  Littlemore considered telling the mayor about the trunk he and Younger had found in the caisson but decided against it, since the trunk had revealed nothing conclusive so far, and since he wasn't supposed to have gone down to the caisson in the first place. 'I just heard from Gidow, sir, in Chicago. He's checked with the police. He went through the whole city directory. He looked at the blue book. She didn't come from Chicago, sir. No one's ever heard of Elizabeth Riverford in Chicago.'

  McClellan looked long and hard at the detective. 'I was with George Banwell Sunday night,' he said. 'I've told you that three times.'

  'I know, sir. And I'm sure Miss Riverford couldn't have been there with you, wherever you were, without your knowing it, right, sir?'

  'What?'

  'I'm sure Mr Banwell didn't secretly bring Miss Riverford with him, sir, and kill her around midnight, and then bring her back with him to the city and put her in the apartment, making it look like she was killed there. If you follow me, Your Honor.'

  'Good Lord, Detective.'

  'It's just that I don't know where you were, sir, or how Mr Banwell got there, or whether you were together the whole time.'

  McClellan took a deep breath. 'Very well. On Sunday night, Mr Littlemore, I dined with Charles Murphy at the Grand View Hotel near Saranac Inn. The dinner was arranged that very day - by George Banwell. Mr Haffen was another of the guests.'

  Littlemore was startled. Boss Murphy was the head of Tammany Hall. Louis Haffen, a Tammany man, had been borough president of the Bronx - until last Sunday. 'But you just had Haffen kicked out of office, sir. By Governor Hughes.'

  'Hughes was down the road, at Mr Colgate's, with Governor Fort.'

  'I don't understand, sir.'

  'I was there, Detective, to hear what conditions Murphy would demand in exchange for making me Tammany's mayoral candidate.'

  Littlemore said nothing. The news astonished him.

  Everyone knew the mayor had declared himself the enemy of Tammany Hall. He had sworn to have no dealings with the likes of Murphy.

  McClellan went on. 'George persuaded me to go. He argued that, with Haffen's dismissal, Murphy might be willing to deal. He was. Murphy desired me to install Haffen in the office of the comptroller. Not right away, but in a month or two. If I agreed, Justice Gaynor would stand down. I become the nominee, and the election is mine. They claimed that Hughes wanted me nominated, which rather surprised me, and they volunteered to commit themselves before the governor that very night, if only I would give them my word.'

  'What did you say, sir?'

  'I told him that Mr Haffen was not in need of a new post, having already embezzled a quarter of a million dollars from the city in his last one. George was quite disappointed. He wanted me to accept. No doubt he has profited from our friendship, Littlemore, but he has earned every dollar the city paid him. In fact, I gave him his last payment this week, not a penny more than his original bid. And no, I don't see how he could have killed Miss Riverford at Saranac Inn. We left the Grand View at nine- thirty or ten, dropped in at Colgate's, and returned to the city together. We rode in my car, arriving in Manhattan at seven in the morning. I don't believe Banwell was out of my sight for more than five or ten minutes at a time the entire night. Why he would misrepresent the location of Miss Riverford's family is a mystery to me - if he did.

  He may have meant that Riverford lives in one of the surrounding towns.'

  'We're checking them now, sir.'

  'At any rate, he could not have killed her.'

  'I don't believe he did, Your Honor. I wanted to rule him out. But I'm close, sir. Real close. I have a good lead on the murderer.'

  'Good heavens, Littlemore. Why didn't you say so? Who is it?'

  'If you don't mind, sir, I'll know if my lead pans out tonight. If I could just wait until then.'

  The mayor agreed. But before he dismissed Littlemore, he gave the detective a card with a telephone number on it. 'That is the telephone in my house,' he said. 'Call me at once, at any hour, if you discover anything.'

  At eight-thirty Friday evening, Sigmund Freud responded to a knock at his hotel room door. He w
as dressed in a bathrobe, with dinner trousers, white shirt, and black tie beneath it. Outside his door was a tall young man, looking both physically and morally exhausted.

  'Younger, there you are,' said Freud. 'My goodness, you look terrible.'

  Stratham Younger made no reply. Freud could see immediately that something had happened to him. But Freud's store of sympathy was greatly depleted. The boy's dishevelment signified for him the general disarray into which things had descended since his arrival in New York. Must every American be involved in some kind of disaster? Couldn't at least one of them keep his shirt tucked in?

  'I came to see how you were, sir,' said Younger.

  'Apart from having lost both my digestion and my most important follower, I am quite well, thank you,' replied Freud. 'The cancelation of my lectures at your university will of course also be a source of satisfaction. Altogether a most successful journey to your country.'

  'Did Brill go to the Times, sir?' asked Younger. 'Did he find out if the article is genuine?'

  'Yes. It is genuine,' Freud said. 'Jung gave the interview.'

  'I will go to President Hall tomorrow, Dr Freud. I read the article. It is gossip, anonymous gossip. I am sure I can persuade Hall not to cancel. Jung says nothing against you.'

  'Nothing against me?' Freud laughed derisively, recollecting his last exchange with Jung. 'He has repudiated Oedipus. He has rejected the sexual aetiology. He denies even that a man's childhood experiences are the source of his neuroses. As a result, your medical establishment has thrown its weight behind him, rather than me. And your President Hall apparently intends to follow suit.'

  The two men remained at the threshold of Freud's hotel room, one on either side. Freud did not invite Younger in. Neither spoke.